


Named

by plumedy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Chapter 13: The Jedi, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Gen, ManDadlorian, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Names, One Shot, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27878293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: He's heard this name said many times by many different people.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 50
Kudos: 503





	Named

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you @ the nonnie on FFA who suggested that considering how the Jedi are about attachments, this may very well have been the first time/the first occasion in a very long time when the baby actually heard his name from a loved one. This headcanon haunted me until I sat down and wrote this snippet!

He’s heard this name said many times by many different people.

He climbs out of his crib, landing softly on the intricately patterned stone below. A young man sits on his haunches before him, his soft brown robes touching the floor.

“Hey, Grogu,” he says, and smiles. It’s an awkward kind of smile, much like the man himself: there’s something quietly unsure about him, about his whole posture, like his bones don’t quite fit together like they should. This amuses the Child. The man is good. The fabric of his robes looks eminently touchable, too – if the Child could, he’d wrap himself in it and sleep in that comfortable darkness.

Then there’s his braid. It’s a small ginger thing, wispy like a stalk of grain, but no one else in the Child’s Home has anything like it. The Child wants to touch it, too.

“Ah,” he says, and stretches one three-clawed hand towards the braid, hanging so temptingly close.

The man laughs and puts his palm up in a gesture of protest. He’s distracted; he’s thinking of something else. Someone else.

Here, in the Home, people try to think soft translucent thoughts that don’t touch others. But sometimes the Child senses brightness and sharpness in them even so – streams of feeling that flow where they shouldn’t.

 _I hope he’s pleased with how I’m doing_ , the man thinks anxiously. _He smiled at me when I offered him a glass of Tarine tea this morning. What did he speak to the Council about? I hope it’s nothing bad. At any rate, I felt nothing out of the ordinary through the bond. I swear, sometimes it’s like he takes on dangerous missions on purpose…_

This way – through feeling the ties between his guardians – the Child learns of the idea of love.

The one the man with the braid loves isn’t soft or translucent, either. He’s brimming with brightness from his sloping forehead to the tips of his brown leather boots.

“I’m here to play with you, Grogu,” says the man in his deep warm voice. The Child likes this voice, and he likes the games Brown Boots plays with him.

The smooth multicoloured bits of coral from the Great Western Sea float around the room like so many planets orbiting a star. As he tries his best to keep their trajectories even, the Child listens to the Force around him and feels the thoughts of his teacher.

Brown Boots loves, too. But his love is more diffuse; it doesn’t flow in one direction, but spreads evenly like a glow. It’s a Love-Purpose, Love-Challenge.

 _Once in a lifetime chance,_ he thinks. _Perhaps once in a generation. Mace doesn’t understand. But he’ll thank me later. It’ll be a better future for all of them – for the kid, too. Through this the Order will flourish._

The Child reaches out and sticks one of the corals, a small tourmaline-blue one, into his toothless mouth. Its smoothness against his gums is soothing, and chewing it distracts him from the images of deserts blossoming and dying worlds restored.

Brown Boots is a good sort, but sometimes listening to his thoughts makes the Child feel small and vulnerable. His love is vast and cold, and so unlike the love of the man with the braid.

There’s another. He’s much like the Child – three stubby fingers on each hand, same moss-green skin, and same delicate leaf-ears. His face is wrinkled like a koja nut.

The Child finds this delightful. Every time he sees The One Who Looks Like Him, he flails his arms excitedly and makes inquisitive noises. He wants to ruffle the grey fuzz on the crown of the Other One’s head. It looks like it would be soft and fine, like a spider’s web or a coil of sewing thread.

The Other One is hard to read. His thoughts are obscured.

“Grogu,” he says simply. His voice is low and croaking, though not unpleasantly so. “Young, you are. A long path ahead of you.”

“Eh?” says the Child, and reaches out with both hands, smiling shyly at the Other One.

Under many, many layers of softness, something stirs in the Other One’s mind. It’s almost bright. Not quite love, but – warmth. Warmth at the sight of the Child.

Then it dies, snuffed out like a flame. The Other One is very old, and he’s had many years to make his thoughts as soft and translucent as they can be. He chooses not to love.

“Difficult, it will be,” he says. He looks at the Child and yet not, his eyes trained on something immeasurably distant. “For you, and for us all.”

The Child eats the food the Other One has brought him – a generous helping of buckwheat noodles floating in a bowlful of hot meaty broth – but his hunger doesn’t abate. That’s odd, and the Child pauses for a moment, confused.

It’s not food he’s hungry for. He craves the warmth he sensed in the Other One. The love the man with the braid feels when he thinks of Brown Boots.

The Child wants-

Has anyone ever loved _him_?

“Grogu,” says Ahsoka Tano. Her breath is silvery in the cold, humid atmosphere of Corvus.

It has been a very long time since anyone used that name. The Child looks up at her curiously. _Me?_

 _You_ , agrees Ahsoka.

The light of her lantern falls on her lekku, shading the white stripes a warmer yellow. Inside, she’s peaceful – but sad.

The Child touches her thoughts in an attempt at comfort, much like he’d pat her hand. Yet Ahsoka’s sadness is deep, and she gently steers him away from that part of her mind. _It is good of you to try, young one; but there’s nothing you can do for me._

He lowers his eyelids in response, and lets her reach into his own memories.

_You’ve been through much darkness._

The Child doesn’t want to remember that. Instead, he thinks of the darkness of space, and of the stars dotting the sidelight of a ship. He thinks of leather-gloved fingers absently stroking his ear; of the way the metallic voice cracked when the Child tried to imitate this gesture by patting the cold beskar of his guardian’s helmet.

“Grogu?” repeats the Mandalorian, uncertainly. Distracted, the Child whirls around to look at him. _Oh_ , he thinks. _Oh!_

When his guardian says it, the name sounds so very different. There’s so much brightness and warmth in it, and an edge of something desperate that squeezes the Child’s little heart with the echo of reflected emotion.

No one has _ever_ -

 _I love you too,_ the Child thinks. He isn’t sure whether his guardian can hear him, but he tries his best to make his thoughts as bright as the blue of Ahsoka’s lightsabers. _I love you so very much._

The Mandalorian clears his throat and turns his helmet a little, the way someone else would if they didn’t want their face to be seen.

“Grogu,” he says again, even though he just said it moments ago.

It feels right. Yes. Said in this crackling voice filtered through many layers of graphite and steel mesh, it sounds better than it ever has.

Grogu. That is his name.


End file.
